Do you have any examples in mind of where this feature was billed confusingly?
The product page and Model S purchase page both include clear disclaimers in both the first sentence or directly below the bulleted feature list.
> Full Self Driving
> Your vehicle will be able to drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention and will continuously improve.
The normal-sized text says "Your car will be able to drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention and will continuously improve"
Only once you get to the small font do you get "The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates."
This is not a truly honest presentation of the feature. It starts by selling the end goal that may or may not be achieved at some undefined point in the future. Then in small print it says the current features don't actually make the car autonomous.
Honest presentation might be something with a headline like "Self-Driving Beta" and in normal text say "Access to current and all future updates as we work toward full self driving. Currently self-driving can navigate most conditions under human supervision. By purchasing self-driving now you automatically get all future improvements as we continuously work toward fully autonomous driving".
If it were up to me I'd also sell this as a perk for "investing" in the company: if you buy self-driving now transfer it to your next Tesla vehicle for free. That makes it a reward for paying $12k for a beta feature and more importantly eliminates any worries that actual full self driving won't arrive before you upgrade vehicles. It also encourages people to be repeat customers.
edit: It appears I was out of date. Tesla now allows you to transfer lifetime supercharging and/or FSD to a new Tesla for free so that's a nice perk and one they should lead with and commit to long-term.
Yes, when they started calling it full self driving, which by any reasonable person’s definition it isn’t. That deception is not entirely ameliorated by using more correct language in other places.
Is it "Full Self Driving" xor is "Minimal driver intervention" required?
> The currently enabled Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.
"Full Self Driving" and "vehicle is not autonomous" is still confusing to English speakers, IMO.
> Before enabling Autopilot, the driver first needs to agree to “keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times” and to always “maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle.” Subsequently, every time the driver engages Autopilot, they are shown a visual reminder to “keep your hands on the wheel."
If you bought this car without realizing how it worked... I sympathize, but the info was provided.
If you enabled this feature without understanding how it worked... that's now on you.
How does that saying go? You'll never convince someone of a fact that their income depends on not knowing?
When someone writes code that is very difficult for anyone else to grok it's the code writers fault, but when someone has a misapprehension of a feature of a car, because it's on the tin SOMEWHERE, it's the fault of the customer who often times is unsophisticated in terms of vehicles and tech within vehicles.
The only reason to label it incorrectly is to falsely advertise.
I believe this is invented outrage, their actual capabilities are made very clear.
Full Self Driving was chosen to describe its intended capabilities exactly.
Was the SLS misleading before its first flight in 2022 because it had yet to launch to space? Were the James Webb or Hubble falsely advertised during production? "They want us to call that thing a 'Space Telescope' when it's obviously a pile of mirrors on the ground..."
There's a massive difference between "I want to build thing x -> I'm building x -> I have built x -> Pay me for x -> Ok, here's your x, go ahead and use x" and "I want to build x in the future -> pay me for x -> here's x, go ahead and use it -> I am building x -> I have built x (I may not be able to build it at all, btw)".
Nobody would be griping about the name being misleading if it was marketed as Tesla Tartan or something.
Intervention and attention are not the same.